HISTORY OF THE ISLANDS 



307 



turned to the South Shetlands. No written record of this voyage exists and our only 

 authority for it is Weddell's track chart facing p. i of his book A Voyage toiuards the 

 South Pole, in which a track entitled Beatifoy in December 1 821 is shown (Fig. 3), together 

 with the legend against the date December 12 '■'saiv the land ". The distance at which this 

 landfall was made, although great, is not improbable, for Yalour^ in writing of the 

 northerly approach to the islands states that in clear weather the South Orkneys can be 

 seen sixty miles away. Moreover, on February 23, 1838, D'Urville^ records that he 

 sighted the South Orkneys from a position not so very far from that of the ' Beaufoy ' on 

 December 12, 182 1, as he was passing from the western end of Coronation Island towards 



Fig. 3. Macleod's and Weddell's tracks in December, January and February, 1821-2: taken from 

 Weddell's track chart in A Voyage towards the South Pole. 



Clarence Island: "Entre sept & huit heures nous relevons encore les iles Orkney aux 

 bornes de I'horizon presqu'a vingt lieues de distance." 



This second sighting of the South Orkneys, following so close on their discover}' by 

 Powell, is generally ascribed nowadays to Weddell, who was then at the South Shetlands 

 on his second southern voyage. Bruce^ writes : " Weddell, definitely, in December 1821 , 

 cruised into the north-western corner of the Weddell Sea in the cutter Beaufoy of Lon- 

 don, almost synchronously with Powell and N. B. Palmer, but scarcely so far east, and 

 almost simultaneously discovered the South Orkneys." Recent investigation, however, 



1 Yalour, J., En el ultima viaje de la Uruguay a las regioncs polares, Bol. Inst. Geog. Argentina, xxii, p. 34. 



2 D'Urville, D., 1842, Voyage au Pole Sud, Histoire du Voyage, 2, p. 137 (Paris). 



3 Bruce, W. S., 1917, loc. cit., supra, p. 243. 



